Andy Laverne - Between Earth & Mars

Styles: Piano Jazz 
Year: 2000
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 68:30
Size: 157,7 MB
Art: Front

(8:53)  1. Retrospect
(8:23)  2. Gardenia
(5:35)  3. On Green Dolphin Street
(8:15)  4. Tenderly
(6:04)  5. Blue in green
(8:32)  6. Tri-tones
(8:18)  7. Maiden voyage
(8:39)  8. Between Earth & Mars
(5:48)  9. B.E.

Like label mate Harold Danko, pianist Andy LaVerne possesses talent that should be commensurate with a much broader public awareness. One of sax legend Stan Getz’s favorite accompanists, LaVerne has built a sizable catalog for SteepleChase over the past two decades- some 18 strong- with Between Earth & Mars serving as a reunion with vibraphonist Dave Samuels. Also thrown into the mix is bassist Jay Anderson, who completes this rather atypical trio. Far away from his visibility as a past member of the popular group Spyro Gyra, Samuels contributes a singular performance that reminds us that he is indeed one of the finest practitioners of his craft.

LaVerne strives in this type of configuration as his style is strongly rooted in a deep sense of lyricism and an advanced harmonic knowledge. Anderson does enough to keep things buoyantly afloat to the point that a drummer just isn’t missed. The piano and vibes combination is a real winner- of course Gary Burton and Chick Corea taught us that long ago- and LaVerne and Samuels have developed attractive arrangements that make the most of a smart mix of contemporary standards and originals. “Blue In Green” is especially arresting in this new form, taken a bit faster than the original (check out another fine duo performance of this one by Burton and Ralph Towner). The title cut, a LaVerne tune, is also a highpoint, sporting an intense solo from Samuels. It may have taken almost a decade for LaVerne and Samuels to create a follow-up to Fountainhead but it was well worth the wait. ~ C.Andrew Hovan https://www.allaboutjazz.com/between-earth-and-mars-andy-laverne-steeplechase-records-review-by-c-andrew-hovan.php

Personnel: Andy LaVerne- piano, Dave Samuels- vibes, Jay Anderson- bass

Between Earth & Mars

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Kenny Dorham - The Best Of Kenny Dorham - The Blue Note Years

Styles: Trumpet Jazz
Year: 1964
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 58:46
Size: 135,3 MB
Art: Front

( 4:26)  1. Minors Holiday
( 4:16)  2. Lotus Flower
( 6:00)  3. Mexico City
( 5:38)  4. Philly Twist
( 7:57)  5. Blue Bossa
( 7:11)  6. Short Story
(15:16)  7. Una Mas (One More Time)
( 7:58)  8. The Fox

Often lost in the shadows of A-team players like Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, trumpeter Kenny Dorham quietly made a name for himself throughout both the bebop and hard bop years from the mid-'40s to the mid-'60s. His tart tone and mercurial phrasing ideally framed here, The Best of Kenny Dorham offers newcomers a perfect way to get familiar with one of modern jazz's top composers and players. Starting with 1955's classic Afro-Cuban LP, the eight cuts include such essential Dorham originals as "Minor's Holiday," "Blue Bossa," and "Una Mas." And helping out along the way are tenor saxophonists Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley, guitarist Kenny Burrell, pianist Horace Silver, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. A fine snapshot of Dorham in his eclectic prime. ~ Stephen Cook https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-best-of-kenny-dorham-blue-note-years-mw0000082543

Personnel: Trumpet – Kenny Dorham; Kenny Burrell - Guitar; Paul Chambers - Bass; Richard Davis - Bass; Kenny Drew - Piano; Cecil Payne - Saxophone; Philly Joe Jones - Drums.

The Best Of Kenny Dorham - The Blue Note Years

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Yelena Eckemoff - Adventures of the Wildflower

Styles: Piano Jazz
Year: 2021
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 122:01
Size: 281,3 MB
Art: Front

(6:16) 1. In the Ground
(6:21) 2. Germination
(9:06) 3. Weeding the Garden
(4:25) 4. Dos Chasing a Mouse
(7:05) 5. Rain
(6:58) 6. Hoome by the Fence
(6:09) 7. Chickens
(8:51) 8. Drought
(5:20) 9. Thundershower
(7:43) 10. Winter Slamber
(6:10) 11. Waking up in the Spring
(7:52) 12. Buds and Flowers
(7:47) 13. Butterflies
(5:09) 14. Hummingbirds
(4:48) 15. Children Playing with Seed Pods
(8:51) 16. Dying
(5:49) 17. Another Winter
(7:13) 18. Baby Columbines

The seeds of pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff's Adventures Of The Wildflower were planted in 2013, when she traveled to Hollola, Finland, to record Blooming Tall Phlox (L&H Productions, 2017) with a group of young Finnish musicians. Several Eckemoff albums came about after that recording, but the experience with her Finnish friends must have exerted a sort of gravitational pull, and in 2019 she made a return trip to the country to team with vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, bassist Antti Lotjonen and drummer Olavi Louhivuori who had all participated in Blooming Tall Phlox and newcomers to her world, multi-instrumentalist Jarmo Saari (guitars, theremin, glass harp) and saxophonist Jukka Perko, who took trumpeter Verneri Pohjola's 'horn" spot in the ensemble.

Eckemoff does concept albums: Lions (2015), Colors (2017), Desert (2018), all on L&H Productions. It is more of the same with The Adventures Of The Wildflower, a deep exploration of the journey of a Columbine flower from babyhood to maturity, as she (note the anthropomorphization) observes the natural world surrounding her. A fanciful idea, perhaps, but not without artistic forerunners the concept of the potential for plant sentience has been artistically explored on Stevie Wonder's soundtrack album Journey Through "The Secret Life Of Plants" (Tamla, 1979), and with science fiction novelist Gregory Bendford's speculative Marsmat, an algae-like growth on the planet Mars that could communicate, planet-wide, with its fellow "Mats." This in his novels Martian Race (1999) and The Sunborn (2005).

The two disc set begins distinctively, with the eerie wavering of a theremin rising above the ensemble sound. To those hanging out at the shore and grooving to the Beach Boys in 1966 or for anyone else in that timeframe with access to a radio the theremin was instrumental (hah!) in the success of the Beach Boys' song "Good Vibrations," the group's third number one hit single. Its eerie, space-age warble sounds like cosmic rays, or a death beam from an attacking UFO, 1950s sci-fi B movie style. Something of a gimmick then, but not so for Eckemoff, or from Jarmo Saari, who incorporates that sound to the mix with a deft hand. And, in part, this new sound, used texturally and sparingly inside Eckemoff's well-shaped arrangements, is a part of what sets Adventures Of The Wildflower above the pianist's earlier work, as does Saari's guitar and glass harp, Panu Savolainen's luminous vibraphone, Jukka Perko's understated but always tasty soprano and tenor sax contributions, combined with the subtle ensemble acumen of drummer Olavi Louhivuori and bassist Antti Lotjonen. Add to this Eckemoff's growth and freedom as a composer/arranger.

The eighteen Eckemoff compositions here are some of her most abstract and sometimes asymmetrical (but beautiful) offerings consider the Columbine flower that boasts a delicate and lovely symmetry; the wild plant from which it blossoms that does not. Taken as a whole, the two disc, two hour set creates intricately placid, mysterious and modernistically spiritual feeling a chamber jazz from a mid-twenty first century church.

It is sometimes playful, and could, at times, fit into the "exotica" category of sounds an exotica influenced, Henry David Thoreau-like, by the everyday goings on in the confines of the church of Yelena Eckemoff's backyard, in tunes entitled "Germination," "Dog Chasing A Squirrel," "Chickens," (yes, her chickens get some glory here, says Eckemoff, with a twinkling eye and a merry laugh), "Butterflies" and "Children Playing With Seed Pods." Things that could be considered mundane, if the artist in Eckemoff hadn't revealed though her complex and unconventionally beautiful music, her sounds full of joy and wonder, that they are not. Eckemoff includes in the album packaging her poems and her paintings, following the Columbine plant's life journey an effort worthy of a children's (or an adult's) book.By Dan McClenaghan
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/adventures-of-the-wildflower-yelena-eckemoff-l-and-h-production

Personnel: Yelena Eckemoff: piano; Jukka Perko: saxophone; Jarmo Saari: guitar, electric; Panu Savolainen: vibraphone; Antti Lotjonen: bass; Olavi Louhivuori: drums.

Adventures of the Wildflower

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Carol Welsman - Fourteen

Styles: Vocal And Piano Jazz
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 49:00
Size: 112,9 MB
Art: Front

(3:08) 1. Pick Yourself Up
(4:41) 2. I Concentrate On You
(3:23) 3. The Night Has 1000 Eyes
(3:04) 4. Sometimes I'm Happy
(3:20) 5. Que Reste-t-il De Nos Amours?
(6:05) 6. If You Could See Me Now
(3:48) 7. Somos Novios
(3:17) 8. Plus Je T'embrasse
(3:36) 9. Be My Valentine
(3:31) 10. Come Fly With Me
(5:59) 11. Black Coffee
(5:02) 12. C'est Le Printemps

Currently closing in on 30 years as one of jazz’s most stylistically and culturally diverse jazz singers, vocal interpreters and pianists, six time Juno Award nominee Carol Welsman has occasionally tied the songs on her collection neatly together with a specific overall theme as she did on two of her best in the last decade sharing her passion for travel and cultures on Journey (2012) and her splendid immersion into Latin Jazz on Dance With Me (2020).

Yet even when she’s more eclectic and freewheeling in her choices of material as she shares on her latest coolly cosmopolitan, multi-lingual (English, French, Spanish) latest collection Fourteen Welsman is always offering an intimate opening to the music that has literally jazzed her life. As her first post-pandemic recording, she seems determined to help soothe the complex wave of emotions that rock our worlds every day, with an eye and ear towards lifting our exhausted spirits starting with the playfully swinging, exuberantly optimistic romp through Nat King Cole’s “Pick Yourself Up.”

She's also keen on reminding us that life can still be joyful and romantic with three charming tunes sung beautifully in French, including the lush, dreamy closer, the Rodgers & Hammerstein waltz “C’est le printemps” (which the singer memorably recorded in English as “It Might As Well Be Spring” on her 2015 album Alone Together. Her Spanish on the balmy bossa twist on the Mexican originated “Somos Novios” – more familiar to us as “It’s Impossible” – is equally delightful and sweetly infectious. One of the most unique stories connected to the choice of material on Fourteen is her sassy and hipster samba-fied invitation to escape on “Come Fly With Me,” which gets extra buoyancy from her percussive piano, breezy, inventive scatting and lively interaction with her Quebec based band, including guitarist Pierre Côté and bassist Rémi-Jean LeBlanc.

It’s hard to believe she originally recorded it for her self-titled 2007 album but it didn’t make the final cut; fortunately Sammy Cahn’s son Steve felt it was the best version of the song since Sinatra and Welsman felt now was the appropriate moment. Coming after these anxious few years, its sparkling uplift indeed hits the heartstrings just right.

She likewise lifts our spirits throughout with more of her remarkable scatting, from the sweet breezes she creates in duet with Côté on “I Concentrate on You” and the peppy improvisational vocal whimsy a few minutes into the lighthearted “The Night Has 1000 Eyes” to the sly duality with LeBlanc’s plucky bass on “Sometimes I’m Happy.” Balancing the overall upbeat energy of Fourteen are two more melancholy tunes that showcase her trademark emotional expressiveness as a balladeer, “If You Could See Me Now” and the Peggy Lee originated “Black Coffee.”

Also a gifted songwriter, she graces us with a lone original (“Be My Valentine”) which connects to the dominant forward thinking vibe of the album. The Canadian born, L.A.based Welsman is a true treasure who, over a quarter century into her career, never fails to draw us into her splendor and surprise filled autobiography.Jonathan Widran https://www.jwvibe.com/single-post/carol-welsman-fourteen

Fourteen

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